page_title: Titisee
section_title: Winter freezing
hierarchical_section_title: Titisee / Winter freezing
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Panorama vom gefrorenen Titisee
context_page_description: The Titisee is a lake in the southern Black Forest in Baden-Württemberg. It covers an area of 1.3 km² and is an average of 20 m deep. It owes its formation to the Feldberg glacier, the moraines of which were formed in the Pleistocene epoch and nowadays form the shores of the lake. The lake's outflow, at 840 m above sea level, is the River Gutach, which merges with the Haslach stream below Kappel to form the Wutach. The waters of the Titisee thus drain eventually into the Upper Rhine between Tiengen and Waldshut. On the north shore lies the spa town of the same name, today a part of the municipality of Titisee-Neustadt.
context_section_description: The Titisee takes a long time to freeze over in the winter owing to the winds, which keep the surface of the water moving almost all continuously. For the frozen lake to be opened for use, it must have a solid ice thickness of at least 16 cm (6.3 in) (solid ice or compacted ice has virtually no air pockets). When conditions appear favourable for the opening the lake, daily ice measurements are taken by the Titisee-Neustadt municipal authorities at three or four places. If opening the ice to public use is possible, and those responsible give it their blessing, specific, demarcated areas of the lake are opened, but never the whole lake.
  These regulations were put in place after an accident in 1966. Up to that time, the lake had been used in winter as a landing strip for small aircraft. On 14 January 1966, a tractor with a snowplough was clearing the landing strip of snow when it  broke through the ice and sank to the bottom of the lake, taking the driver, Walter Wilde (29), with it. His body was only recovered 2 weeks later.
caption: The frozen Titisee seen from Alemannenhof (2009)
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